trainsgenderfoxgirl2816:
depsidase:
Passenger rail is already starting to be Preferable to Air Travel along certain corridors in the US
trains, particularly a daily commute trainride, are perfect for listening to podcasts, or reading–everyone in nyc reads, because everyone takes the subway. If you get on a train at 8am in nyc, everyone just pulls out a book, or knitting, or a podcast, while the train takes them to work.
Commuting is a time of rest, when it consists of a train ride on a train that comes every ten or even five minutes. There isn’t traffic, there isn’t the mental and physical strain of driving a car. You go to the station or platform, you go up or down some stairs or a lift, and you get on the train and find a spot–a seat, or a bar or strap to hold to.
And then you wait.
It’s marvellously centring, after a workday, after getting groceries, after anything at all really, to have that liminal time between There and Home, where you’re forced to disconnect from the world, plunged into the earth, going in the same direction with hundreds of other people around you. What’s at the next stop is random–who gets off, who gets on,
and sometimes, in a place like new york, centre of America’s live theatre world, sometimes Art gets on the train at the next stop. Will you like it? Maybe not. Maybe you will. Maybe it’s kids, practising something and not being quite so good; maybe it’s actual professional cast for a broadway show, getting on incognito for a surprise; maybe it’s just the sound of a performer on the platform, singing or playing something. But that very human thrill is something I love. I know many people complain about it, and I don’t know why really–but then again, I have known what it is to live in a place where art is scarce, and I am a strange sort of person that seems to like what others dislike and hate what others like. Who knows. But the truth remains–even if you don’t like it, sometimes Art gets on the train.
If you’ve never actually used public transit for a commute every day, it’s hard to explain the lack of stress. You literally turn off. You get to let your mind wander, or read, or do something calming.
Public transit also is, I think, the core reason that new yorkers feel such loyalty to new york even after leaving, or if they’re like me and only spent a couple years there. I think it has to do with the trains. I think seeing all kinds of people, all classes all creeds, use the train every day, I think that does something good to your brain. You bond with everybody, doing the same thing, getting on and off the train, going to the same stops. You realise everybody is like you, and you are like everybody, and I think we need that in order to get peace.
Public transit–specifically, trains–will lead to more peace and I believe that with my whole heart.
1000% my biggest reason for wanting to be in a place with public transit like this is so I don’t have to drive to and from work. Driving is stressful enough even before you add on the stress of the morning and evening rush hours. I cannot BEGIN to count the number of days where I left work in a decent mood, only to arrive home exhausted and irritable because I had to spend an hour fighting traffic to get home.